What The Fire Said: The Phantom of the Opera

What The Fire Said

What The Fire Said is the portal for my own art and writing. It is necessarily a work in progress, and you are welcome to return anytime to see what has been added here.

In my header you will see both contemporary calibration dials and centuries-old symbols used in the practice of alchemy. My art tends to operate at the interface between such extremes: between our shared distant past and an unknown far future, between the realities of history and the at-times greater realities that lie over the threshold in the world of myth. At these extremes science and magic, myth and history turn into each other, become indistinguishable from each other – as in the far future they well might. ~ Hawkwood (David Bergen)

Creative Commons License

What The Fire Said by David Bergen a.k.a. Hawkwood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License covering all written and visual material at: http://whatthefiresaid.blogspot.nl/.

These personally created artworks remain the property of the © David Bergen Studio. The terms of my above Creative Commons License allow for re-posting of these works on the express condition that they remain unaltered (that is: with my embedded © credit attached) and that the context is non-commercial. Please respect my art.

Hawkwood (David Bergen)

Disclaimer

Ownership of any copyrighted material appearing either as visual, written or audio files on this weblog, remains with the holders of the original copyright, and no further claim to such material by the author of this site is intended, and need not be inferred. It is believed that the limited use of any web resolution images for the purposes of identification and critical commentary qualifies as fair use.

Copyright of any material credited to Hawkwood remains with the author. The registered creative commons license below permits further use and distribution of Hawkwood's work subject to the three conditions: (1) The user attributes the work to 'Hawkwood', (2) The context is non-commercial, (3) The work remains unaltered. A link back to this weblog is appreciated.

The despair of love that not only is unrequited, but always will remain so. In the fairy story, it is Beauty who redeems the Beast through her unconditional love. But the profound horror in Gaston Leroux's story stems from the fact that there is no redemption. The score of La Traviata and the roof of the Paris Opera House form the background.

When my cover art for this title was originally published I received a charming letter from the president of the British Phantom Appreciation Society (no, I did not know that there was one either) praising the accuracy of my portrayal of Erik in its fidelity to Leroux's original text. Even the glowing eyes, which seem almost melodramatically supernatural, are exactly as Leroux describes them. Others have told me that they sense a touching sympathy in my 'portrait' of Erik. If that is so, then perhaps this tragic character has found some measure of redemption after all. You can read a full account of my creation of this painting on The Phantom of the Opera.

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